Case Study – University of Cincinnati

UC's Tools and Infrastructure
To handle daily lecture production, the UC team has built a mobile production rack with all the goodies you need to do full video production and encoding on-site. It's a road case racked with a Dell Workstation encoder, a 4-input video switcher, audio mixer, and various distribution amps and power strips. To capture the video, the team carries three Sony EVID30 pan-tilt-zoom video cameras with a Telemetrics controller. For getting the synchronized slides or other computer-generated visuals, a homegrown solution fits the bill. The system grabs the output of the classroom computer with a scan converter, employing Fath Software's VideoCapX framegrabber ActiveX control to get still shots when the slides change. Streeter used "the Windows Media Encoder SDK to write an app that uses the control to grab the desired frame, ftp it to a web server, then write the URL as a slide flip into the stream via an instance of the encoder." He lightly adds, "Latency is our friend."

When the group does classroom video shoots, the challenge is to find the right balance between being intrusive and getting the shots needed for a good-looking video program. Typically, all the cameras are remote operated, although using the remote controlled cameras to capture classroom teaching can be tricky. Streeter says, "We don't try to follow faculty moving around the room. Switching between a combination of wide shots and zoom shots it's usually possible to keep the professor in a decent shot."

That encoded video gets sent up to one of two video servers. The first is a creaky but serviceable Windows NT 4.0 box running Windows Media server. The other one is where the real action happens – it's a Linux-based Starbak Origin Streaming Appliance (OSA) running Windows Media and Apple Darwin servers. The UC team is pleased with the security, performance and reliability of the Starbak box and plans to get another one soon to provide redundancy.

Links to the encoded video are served up in the school's Blackboard system. In most cases, authentication is handled at the Website level by Blackboard. A user clever enough to figure out the mms:// or rtsp:// streaming link directly to the video server, would get video without any login challenge. Streeter half-jokingly gives his perspective on the consequences of a viewer gaining access to educational material they aren't supposed to see, "What's the worst that could happen -- somebody learns something."

That said, some content is truly sensitive, such as the videos associated with the Early Childhood Learning Community. Unlike the lecture material, it's critical that access controls on this content be secure. For this content, PTSG uses Blackboard to authenticate the user. Then a custom program generates the ASX file that will be sent back to the viewer, while at the same time sending a message to the Starbak OSA server. Starbak OSA will only allow the requested video to play to the specified IP address for a limited time.

To do all its work, PTSG employs two and a half full-time staff Producers, supported by numerous students on the part-time payroll. UC's Electronic Media department is a great source of knowledgeable student workers eager to help out. A "chargeback" model allows the team to recover costs and continue to invest in its people and equipment while supporting the ever growing needs of its customers.

Indeed, Streeter notes that "streaming media has become part of the fabric of the institution and an integral resource for the community." While you can measure real ROI on parts of UC's streaming media project in dollars saved on a particular project or course, it's perhaps more helpful to think of it another way – the way Siff likely had in mind when he started the Streaming Media Project back in 1999. Measure instead the new and unanticipated things the school could do – the opportunities that were not missed - because the school had the tools and the experienced people to help the institution meet its mission: "to provide the highest quality learning environment, world-renowned scholarship, innovation and community service, and to serve as a place where freedom of intellectual interchange flourishes."